Mr. Bannon is quoted in a new book saying that a Trump team meeting with Russians during the campaign was “treasonous” and that the special counsel in the Russia inquiry would “crack Don Jr. like an egg on national TV.”

• Computer security experts have discovered two major security flaws in the microprocessors inside nearly all of the world’s mobile devices, personal computers and servers running in cloud computer networks.

There is no evidence that hackers have taken advantage of the vulnerability, at least so far.

In the News

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North and South Korea have reopened a border hotline after nearly two years of radio silence.Published OnJan. 3, 2018CreditImage by Yonhap, via Associated Press

• The Koreas reopened a telephone hotline to prepare for talks on easing tensions and including the North in the Winter Olympics. (To be clear, there is no one button to trigger a nuclear war). [The New York Times]

• Britain’s National Health Service, depleted by budget cuts, is under the highest strain in decades. [The New York Times]

• President Emmanuel Macron of France proposed new legislation to combat “fake news,” which would allow the authorities to seek the blocking of websites and require sites to be more transparent on paid content. [Reuters]

• A meeting of the prime ministers of Hungary and Poland underlined how their vision of the European Union contrasted with renewed efforts in Brussels to reinvigorate integration. [Politico]

• A U.S. court convicted a Turkish banker of taking part in a billion-dollar scheme to violate sanctions against Iran, a case that also cast suspicion on Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. [The New York Times]

• Ethiopia’s government, under pressure amid protests, has pledged to close a notorious detention center and release some inmates, some of them thought to be political prisoners. [The New York Times]

• The Italian news media called it a “movie-worthy heist”: A Qatari royal’s jewels were stolen in a brazen theft in Venice. [The New York Times]

• You’ve probably heard that New York City’s subway is falling apart. In the latest installment of our series investigating its problems, our magazine writer argues that the city must rebuild it to survive. [The New York Times Magazine]

Noteworthy

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CreditJames Hill for The New York Times

• The diary above is a rare account of life in the Gulag, the Soviet system of forced labor camps. It is now being exhibited in Moscow, at a time when attitudes toward Russia’s past have become less critical.